The Virginia gubernatorial contest has unexpectedly become a test case of the explosive politics of race in the Donald Trump era. The outcome could tug the Republican Party much further toward Trump-style racial provocation and polarization next year. Or it could warn the GOP that such positioning carries too high a political price among white swing voters and minorities.

Republican nominee Ed Gillespie, a party operative and former lobbyist once considered a relative centrist, has built his campaign around a succession of racially infused attacks against his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam. Gillespie has besieged Northam on his opposition to Confederate monuments, and on his support for so-called sanctuary cities, which don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and which Gillespie alleges protect the Central American gang MS-13.

Northam now holds a modest lead in virtually all polls. But if Gillespie wins—or even loses only narrowly—in such a diverse and highly educated coastal state, it will inevitably inspire other Republican candidates in the 2018 midterms to emulate his tactics, particularly his attacks on sanctuary cities. Win or lose, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you see sanctuary-city initiatives on the ballot in as many states as possible next year,” Gene Ulm, Gillespie’s pollster, told me in a recent interview.

Since late August, Gillespie has run television ads accusing Northam of casting a tie-breaking vote in the state legislature to defend sanctuary cities. Over images of heavily tattooed Latino men, the ads charge that Northam’s vote “let dangerous illegal immigrants back on the street, increasing the threat of MS-13.” The spots have been widely criticized as misleading because no jurisdiction in Virginia actually qualifies as a sanctuary city.

Gillespie has also opposed the removal of Confederate statues, even after white-nationalist violence erupted in Charlottesville this summer. And this week, the Republican aired a new ad criticizing outgoing Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe for restoring the voting rights of tens of thousands of felons, a policy that has disproportionately benefited African-Americans in the state.

Democrats maintain that Gillespie is taking this Trump-like approach because he doesn’t naturally excite the president’s core constituency of blue-collar and nonurban whites. “Gillespie is a deeply flawed messenger for a populist message,” Geoff Garin, Northam’s pollster, told me. Garin said the Northam campaign’s internal polling shows that Gillespie’s tone, particularly on immigration, is “hurting him” with the many college-educated white voters in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

To that, Ulm responded succinctly: “That’s wishful thinking.” He said the attacks on sanctuary cities “absolutely” are improving Gillespie’s position with white-collar whites. “You wouldn’t see it so much [on television] if we didn’t believe so strongly in it,” he told me. What’s more, Ulm said, Gillespie’s defense of Confederate statues has fortified his standing among suburban whites further south in the state.

Even if Gillespie’s embrace of a Trump-style message energizes the president’s base, it will benefit him little if it generates a backlash among white-collar whites. Democrats rarely carry college-educated whites in Virginia, but as long as they stay close among them, it’s difficult for Republicans to win, given the state’s substantial minority population. In 2014, Gillespie carried college-educated whites by 10 points in his challenge to Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, but that wasn’t quite enough to win. If Northam runs about even or better among them, it would strongly signal that many of these voters are recoiling from a Trump-like approach to race.

Steve Phillips, a prominent African-American activist and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has charged that the centrist, low-key Northam is too focused on white swing voters and hasn’t placed enough priority on energizing communities of color. Gustavo Torres, president of CASA in Action, a political organizing group that’s aiming to personally contact 65,000 Latino households ahead of the election, disagrees: He praises Northam for offering a clear message of inclusion to immigrants and says his campaign recognizes the importance of mobilizing them.

For all the racial signaling in Trump’s 2016 campaign, turnout compared with 2012 remained flat nationally among Latinos and declined among African-Americans. If minorities in Virginia fail to vote in higher numbers than usual, even after Gillespie’s racial provocations, more Republicans will undoubtedly feel emboldened to follow him down that road. Already, in New Jersey, GOP gubernatorial nominee Kim Guadagno, who’s been trailing Democrat Phil Murphy badly, is closing her campaign by unleashing her own attacks on sanctuary cities and warning of “illegal aliens” committing violent crimes. “The stakes are very high,” Torres said. “If they win in Virginia, it’s going to be very scary all around the nation.”

"Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was spotted entering a congressional office building on Tuesday morning for what a committee aide told The Daily Beast was a meeting with the leaders of the House Foreign Affairs committee and relevant staff about his time working in the Trump administration. ... Tillerson’s arrival at the Capitol was handled with extreme secrecy. No media advisories or press releases were sent out announcing his appearance. And he took a little noticed route into the building in order to avoid being seen by members of the media."